Infection Control Today Magazine

Surveillance & Epidemiology

Electronic surveillance and informatics are used by infection preventionists to assist in the detection of outbreaks of infectious diseases caused by pathogenic organisms in the healthcare setting. Data mining complements the numbers crunching performed by hospital epidemiologists to track transmission of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) and facilitates public reporting of infection rates

Slide Show: Electronic Surveillance Systems

ICT presents a slide show highlighting information from a special digital issue sponsored by CareFusion that explores manual and electronic surveillance systems and their role in facilitating data collection and management. ...More
December 8, 2011
Posted in Galleries, Policies and Practice
Researchers Analyze Tweets for Bio-Surveillance

Micro-blogging services such as Twitter offer the potential to crowdsource epidemics in real-time. However, Twitter posts (‘tweets’) are often ambiguous and reactive to media trends. In order to ground user messages in epidemic response Nigel Collier, of the National ...More
October 13, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Cleaning, Decontamination Help Address Environmental Reservoir of Pseudomonas

Studies of recent hospital outbreaks caused by multiresistant P.aeruginosa (MRPA) have often failed to identify a specific environmental reservoir. Cristina Suarez, of the Infectious Diseases Service at Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge at the University of Barcelona in ...More
October 13, 2011
Posted in News, Environmental Hygiene, Infections & Pathogens
Think Locally When Treating Individually for Communicable Diseases

By taking local biosurveillance data into account when assessing patients for communicable diseases, doctors may be able to make better diagnostic decisions, according to researchers at Children's Hospital Boston. For instance, in the case of strep throat, awareness of ...More
September 20, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Investigators Report on Five Years of Surveillance for Invasive Aspergillosis

As the most common invasive fungal infection, invasive aspergillosis (IA) remains a serious complication in immunocompromised patients, leading to increased mortality. Antifungal therapy is expensive and may result in severe adverse effects. Karolin Graf, of the Institute ...More
August 25, 2011
Posted in News, Environmental Hygiene
Electronic Surveillance Poll Results

ICT announces the latest results of our poll on electronic surveillance. ...More
July 25, 2011
Posted in Blog
Investigators Show That the Epidemiology of CDI is Changing

Clostridium difficile is the most common cause of nosocomial infectious diarrhea in the United States. However, recent reports have documented that C. difficile infections (CDIs) are occurring among patients without traditional risk factors. Jennifer L Kuntz, of the Center ...More
July 19, 2011
Posted in News, Infections & Pathogens
Going Live With Electronic Surveillance

It is the rare infection preventionist (IP) who has not daydreamed at some point about automating components of their infection prevention and control program by going live with an electronic surveillance system. It is also the rare IP who has not been surprised by some of ...More
July 11, 2011
Posted in Articles, Policies and Practice
Active Surveillance, Cleaning Cut Staph Infections in the Surgical ICU

Infection and colonization with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Researchers from Changi General Hospital in Singapore sought to study the impact of active surveillance cultures (ASC), environmental ...More
July 6, 2011
Posted in News, Environmental Hygiene
A Liberal Isolation Policy and MRSA Surveillance

In a presentation at the International Conference on Prevention & Infection Control (ICPIC) held in Geneva, Switzerland. from June 29 through July 2, 2011, researchers from the hygiene team of the Rehabilitation Centre Inkendaal in Vlezenbeek, Belgium reported that ...More
July 5, 2011
Posted in News, PPE & Standard Precautions